Taking its place alongside many of the screen's classic thrillers of the 1930s, The Scarlet Letter has never been seen in a high quality version on home video... until now. Though inspired by one of the all-time classic novels, the story told here is as bizarre as any told by Hollywood as revenge-crazed madman Chillingworth proves to be one of the of the movies' greatest figures of the macabre. In Puritan New England, an era of torture and witch burnings, Chillingworth's mind snaps upon hearing of his wife's adultery and illegitimate child. This man of medicine becomes a "mad doctor" and uses his insane power over people's minds and bizarre medical treatments to attain his vengeance. Having lived with Indian tribes, the doctor possesses a knowledge of weird, primitive drugs, which he uses to torture his victims -- such as a peculiar plant harvested from a dead man's corpse in a graveyard, used to torture the Reverend Dimmesdale in one of the eeriest sequences.

This classic 1934 film was the first sound version of the great American masterpiece by Nathaniel Hawthorne and was produced on a spectacular scale, now specially restored for the first time from the 35mm nitrate original camera negative.